Live life today to the fullest.

Greetings & Salutations SPV Saints! 
I’ve noticed I’ve been using this phrase a lot lately, especially during our 10-10:30 time of Live Prayer: “man, there’s a lot going on in the world!” And while that’s true, I feel like it’s healthy to remind ourselves that it’s unlikely we could find a single window of time where that statement wasn’t true. Now, one of our big issues is that due to the fact that we are in the Information Age, we are obviously made so much more aware of not only what is going on around us, but within minutes, seconds even, what is happening on the other side of the world. 
Thanks to the likes of Un/N Korea & Putin/Russia, the topic of nuclear threats have been on the rise the last few years and  yet, one of the most famous Christian authors/theologians ever, C.S. Lewis, provided a pretty incredible commentary on such matters all the way back in 1948, that is as relevant today for us as it was almost 75 years ago: 
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things--praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts--not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

Wow, what an amazing perspective! Now, I’m not suggesting we bury our heads in the proverbial sand and pretend the issues and threats of our day aren’t real or shouldn’t be taken seriously. But…we cannot and should not allow them to dominate our lives and even rob us of the very life we’re afraid of losing to begin with! 
I LOVE the classic Easter text from the morning of the resurrection: “why do you look for the living among the dead?” (LK. 24.5).  And as powerful as that statement is, I believe flipping it can be just as powerful: “why do you /we focus on death (or the potential of such) when there is so much life around you/us (to be lived)?” 
Go out & live some life today…to the very fullest. 
Much love to you all, Pastor Chris. 
--
Christopher Cahall
[email protected]
www.spv.org


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